In order to look for errors in software programs (an activity referred to as “debugging”), some software development tools provide the ability to record the sequence of operations that a processor performed while executing a program. This is referred to as tracing the execution of the program, and the information that is captured is referred to as trace data The trace data may comprise data such as the addresses of operational codes (opcodes) executed by the processor and values of various processor registers at each executed instruction.
Some software programs operate in multi-tasking systems. That is, the processor of the system executes multiple tasks in a time slice fashion, each task appearing to the computer system user to be simultaneously executing. However, when debugging software programs executed in a multi-tasking system, it is difficult to determine the operating context of a particular task, even when one has trace data for the task. For example, looking at the trace data alone it is difficult to determine: the amount of free memory during a portion or all the trace period; power consumption during a portion of all the trace period; or the processor utilization during a portion or all the trace period, to name a few.